In a conventional autonomous travel system, each vehicle determines a region to which the vehicle can move and travels while setting an obstacle-free path. In addition, according to the invention described in JP-A-2008-9638, the system sets points, each of which is the endpoint of an impassable region, using a topological map in which road connections are represented by points and lines and allows a vehicle to travel on a travel path on the topological map that circumvents those points, thus enabling an efficient and safe autonomous travel.
According to the invention described in JP-A-2010-73080, the method recognizes a travelable space, sets a travel path in that space, and allows a vehicle to move according to that travel path, thus implementing a free and efficient behavior in the space. Those conventional technologies implement autonomous traveling using a single piece of map data. By combining these conventional technologies, even if a region (topological region) that uses a topological map representing road connections by points and lines and a region (metric region) that uses a metric map representing travelable spaces are mixed, block control only within a topological region and block control only within a metric region can be performed.